


Misery Loves Company and Good Wine

by DelilahBlueEyes



Category: Labyrinth (1986), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Gen, Silly, broship, getting drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelilahBlueEyes/pseuds/DelilahBlueEyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpelstiltskin receives an unexpected visit from the Goblin King three months after he throws Belle out. A very old bottle of wine is brought out and drunken male bonding born of sympathy and a mutual fondness for leather ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misery Loves Company and Good Wine

**Author's Note:**

> I am so into OUaT right now, it's not even funny. Especially Rumbelle. But I thought these two would make excellent angsty friends and so this was born. Mutual loss mixed with Atlantian wine makes for a good night! Will probably have a sequel for Jareth later on.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Any and all feedback is appreciated!

The fly wheel spins smoothly on its well-worn axle as his hand glides across the edge, urging it to continue to spin. The wood is polished and supple under his fingertips, the familiar dark wood comforting as the ornate wooden pegs between the inner and outer circuits of the wheel cast a haze over the rest of the room. The steady hum of the thread around the flyer is as necessary to him as the breath in his lungs, even more so because without the thread the wheel would be purposeless and without the constant twirl of the wood before his eyes the thoughts would drift back in. Thoughts of _her_.

 

His hand jerks on the cool wood and for a moment there is a vision behind his eyes of her face turning away as his fingers dig cruelly into her upper arms and he ends up shouting directly into her ear and it still hurts him somehow when she tries to flinch further away and suddenly he can’t stand to look at her almost frightened face because if she’s finally afraid of him then the world has flipped completely upside down and he doesn’t know what will happen now.

 

Rumpelstiltskin’s lips press into a thin line as he forces all thoughts from his mind, hastily setting the fly wheel back into motion and letting his surroundings slip out of focus. There is nothing more soothing to him than to sit in his darkened dining hall (dark because instead of nailing up the curtains again he’d vanished the windows entirely rather than remember the way her warm weight settled so prettily in his arms after her fall from the ladder) and spin. Nothing that he can actually have, anyhow. His son is gone far beyond his reach for the time being, and… she is gone as well. But that is good. He never needed her anyway. Not her cooking or cleaning (he doesn’t eat anymore, uses magic to sustain himself and what use has he for soap when he can easily launder his clothes with a snap of his fingers) or her nagging to keep his boots off the tables. He doesn’t need her long, soft hair catching on his clothes and risking upsetting his potions, or her incessant, light humming as she dusted the bookshelves or her damnable bright eyes that always sparkled so brightly it nearly blinded him whenever she smiled. No, what he needs is his safe, cradling shell of magic and to discover a way to find his boy.

A single tiny glint of light drifts lazily past the tip of his nose and the wheel murmurs to a stop for the first time in days, in weeks as he watches it blink in and out of existence in the unsteady lamplight until it leaves his line of sight. There has never been a speck of glitter to be found in the Dark Castle, he is quite sure. So obviously, the source must be from beyond his walls and therefore an intruder. And he has only one acquaintance with an unnatural fondness for glitter.

“I’m going to have to throw that chair out when you’re finished with it.” He turns around on his stool to face the glittery menace himself. “I’m afraid it won’t survive the encounter with your royal behind.”

“Hello, cousin.” The goblin king dips his head regally from where he is sprawled in the only other chair in the room, one leg thrown over the arm and his booted heel thudding slowly against the upholstered side. Rumpelstiltskin is not surprised to see the monarch decked out in his usual over the top attire, all shimmering fabric and unfeasibly clinging pants. Really, he had never learned the art of subtlety in dress any more than he learned in any other area of his life. Even with his ability to traverse time, his style seems to be stuck on a brazen and colorful form of what a normal man of fortune in Rumpelstiltskin’s own time might find in his closet.

“We’re not cousins, Jareth. I cannot be any actual relation of yours with stolen powers. Besides, your mother swears up and down that you are adopted and I’m inclined to believe her.” He affects a bored tone as he turns fully away from his spinning wheel, setting one hand on his knee and cocking his head at the man sitting across the room.

“Perhaps so, but I much prefer you to any of the others that have harnessed those powers. Definitely more than my actual cousin. He was boring and fat and had no taste for leather. You are clearly the cousin of my heart, if not my blood. And my _stepmother_ will someday forgive me for my rather rambunctious, entirely innocent youthful pranks,” he replies, dusting a small pile of glitter from his sleeve and not bothering to watch as it falls to Rumpelstiltskin’s already choked floor. “Even the great fairy queen Titania can’t hold a grudge forever.”

Rumpelstiltskin’s only response is a shrill, high-pitched giggle as he bounces off his stool and strides toward the large oak dining table in the center of the room, almost pushing himself up onto the polished tabletop but settling for leaning back against it and crossing his ankles. Sitting on the dining table was something she, that impertinent chit, had always done once she’d been sure he wouldn’t blast her to ash for it.

“I wouldn’t count on that, dearie. Women have the unfortunate talent of remembering any slight done them long after the sting of offense has faded.”

Jareth tugs his gloves more securely over his hands, eyes scanning across the ceiling high cabinet half filled with jumbled, half smashed knick-knacks to the strangely faded spots on the wall that had once been occupied by windows. “Indeed. And I’m sure you have a great deal of experience with difficult women endowed with long memories.”

There is a tense moment when every muscle in Rumpelstiltskin’s body locks up and he leans almost imperceptibly toward the Goblin King, his facial features frozen in a strangely frightening grimace. “And why would you think that?” he grates out.

Jareth pauses before answering, just long enough for the silence to thicken uncomfortably. “I was referring to your dealings with the queen, of course. Why, who did you think we were talking about?”

The smile fades from Rumpelstiltskin’s face entirely as he takes half a step forward, hands clenched by his sides. “Why are you here?”

“Well,” Jareth drawls, letting the word trail off as he draws his fingers through the air in a plucking motion, a crystal perched at the very tips that he rolls lazily across his forearms. “I had heard some interesting news of late through the inexorable grapevine concerning you and I thought to come and see for myself if it was indeed true. That you’d had your heart ground to pieces by a very pretty little thing not three months back and were holed up in your own dungeon eating rats and—. Augh!”

The crystal sails across the room to shatter against the opposite wall as Jareth is flung backward out of the armchair, well-polished boots tumbling over his head. Rumpelstiltskin smiles viciously as a sputtering, disheveled blonde head shoots up over the toppled chair to glare warily at his cousin’s hand, still splayed in the air from the motion of blasting him out of his comfortable spot.

Rumpelstiltskin bares his teeth in a growls. “Get out.” Then he turns his back, counting on Jareth to be gone by the time he begins spinning again. But just as is close enough to reach out to pick up his thread, the entire machine disappears from under his hand. He whirls with a snarl to find Jareth perched elegantly at the closest end of the table, not a single strand of hair out of place. “Return my wheel to its place and leave before I asphyxiate you with your own cloak you sparkling fiend!”

“I will return it when I am satisfied that we have spoken properly. It does not bode well for your mental health to stay isolated and bitter in your own musty castle.” Here his expression turns grave. “Believe me.”

Rumpelstiltskin snarls wordlessly and stalks impossibly quickly across the small space that separates them, a wave of formless magic bending the air around him into a haze. “What the _hell_ would you have to offer to the conversation, boy? What could you _possibly_ know about my current situation, baby-snatching recluse though you are?”

Jareth remains utterly calm in the face of his cousin’s anger, though the wind around his face ruffles slightly in the unnatural gusts of magical wind that whirl around them. “Countless people could feel the inclination to ask me that question, as I’m sure many have asked you, but I had hoped that you would be the one person that wouldn’t have to. I had thought that you might possibly…. Sympathize.”

Rumpelstiltskin grits his teeth against the guilt that rises in him at the pain on the other man’s face. Damn him, but he never could figure out how he got so softhearted about his friend. The Goblin King just had a way of worming his way into your heart, irritating though he often was. So he directed his anger toward something less important. “Why in damnation is your hair purple?”

“Do you like it?” Jareth asks delightedly, running a smug hand over the glittering streaks of electric purple shifting through his white-blond mane. Rumpelstiltskin rolls his eyes at the joy that lights up Jareth’s eyes, but he is glad to have knocked that pathetic, guilt inducing look out of his eyes. “I have found myself to be quite attached to the nineteen eighties as far as fashion goes. The music is also very interesting… and… some of its inhabitants.”

Rumpelstiltskin heaves a deep sigh and runs a hand through his hair, turning to slouch against the polished wood beside his cousin. He snaps his fingers and there is a cut class tumbler in each of their hands, a plain bottle with a peeling label filled halfway with a very slightly glowing, pale liquid. Jareth looks from the glass in his hand to the bottle to Rumpelstiltskin, who is already popping the cracked cork out of the mouth of the bottle and pouring himself a generous drink.

“We cannot have this conversation sober?” He asks, though he does not hesitate to follow suit when the bottle is shoved into his hand and he hums happily when he takes a sip. “What is this?”

“No, we cannot. Not if you want it to be a conversation and not the beginning of the end of our friendship,” He returns, taking a large sip from his own glass, enjoying the slight tang of some fruit he couldn’t identify as it actually _buzzes_ down his throat. “It’s Atlantian wine. A very old vintage even by the city’s standards.”

“Ah, I’d forgotten about Atlantis’s tragic fate. I’ll have to pay a visit sometime before its demise and see what I can do to resettle a few of its citizens. It would be a travesty if a drink this good disappeared from existence entirely.”

Silence reigns for a while as they both stare contentedly at the wall, finishing their first drinks and starting their second.  Finally Rumpelstiltskin feels Jareth watching him from the corner of his eye and sighs again, finally seating himself on the tabletop.

“What was her name?” He asks, refusing to be the first one to volunteer any information. He will need to be a bit more drunk to be able to talk about her without tearing the castle down around their ears with the sheer force of his emotions. With that thought, he knocks back his drink and starts a third.

“Her name is Sarah.” Just the way he breathes her name brings a complete change over the Goblin King’s face. He looks so softly at the wall that Rumpelstiltskin could believe that he had been completely forgotten if he had not continued to speak. “She wished away her baby brother to me and I offered her the chance to get him back. She had thirteen hours in which to traverse my domain before the boy would become mine. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered…”

He laughs quietly, his gaze eons away and his drink all but forgotten in his hands, resting in his lap. Rumpelstiltskin is amazed how little prompting it took to invite the whole tale out into the open. Just one little question unravels what seems to be years and years of tension. And there seems to be no effort required on his part, not for a while yet. Just sit and drink and listen. Surely male bonding couldn’t be so simple?

“She has no idea of the dangers she might have faced. The Cleaners and an oubliette are nothing to what she might have interfered. But I guided her path as gently as I could, turning her away from the worst of my own defenses and made certain that she received nothing so much as a bruise to mar her skin. I danced with her in a ballroom stitched together from equal parts of her dreams and the dreams she would soon have. But she didn’t understand. I had made the mistake of setting myself up as the villain in her little adventure. I realize now that I should have made myself an ally in her band of misfits gathered along the way. She could have saved me from the cavalry or a pit trap. I’m sure I would have been very grateful,” he chuckles quietly and Rumpelstiltskin is sure there’s a fantasy or two behind that laugh. “But I did not, and as it turns out, I was so busy keeping her safe and rushing her through all of her obstacles to get her to the castle that I didn’t realize until it was too late what I had done wrong. And by then, all of my temptations fell on deaf ears. She won back the boy that should have been mine, and was gone home again before I could blink.”

Rumpelstiltskin nods slowly, noticing the way the room tilts and bobs around him. Apparently the wine is starting to go to his head. “Have you seen her since all this happened?”

“I see her every night before I go to bed and every morning after having spent the entire night dreaming about here. I see her in the moon and the stars and the—“

“No, I meant have you actually _seen_ the girl?”

“Oh. Yes, I keep a close eye on her through these.” A crystal materializes in the air before them and expands to show a dark haired slip of a young woman performing various daily activities: pushing a laughing boy on a swing, walking arm in arm with a gaggle of smiling girls as they stroll down a boardwalk, standing in a small, badly lit room in a slinky red dress that ends well above her knees turning to see herself from every angle before reaching back to pull the zip at the back of her neck down and push the fabric down her shoulder-. Jareth snaps his fingers and coughs loudly, the image freezing and quickly blurring over to reveal the same dark haired woman lying quietly in a field, her legs kicking back and forth aimlessly as she stares intently at the book in her hands, brushing absently at a cricket that lands on the page.

Rumpelstiltskin lifts his glass to hide his smirk at the faint pink tinge on his companion’s face.

Taking pity on him, he lifts his free hand and lets his eyes slide shut for a moment, preparing himself for what he knows he will see when they open again. And there she is. Floating serenely beside the crystal is a life-sized portrait of… Belle. Belle looking exactly the way he’d seen her the day she fell from the ladder, down to the last hair on her head. It depicted the moment when he’d handed her the rose, formerly her fiancé and she’d thanked him, beginning to turn away as she buried her nose in the flower’s petals. Her eyes were cast down, veiled by her fringe of long, black lashes and a small smile tilted at the corners of her mouth, partially hidden by the rose but still making plain her delight at his gesture. The same clenched feeling that always arises when thinking about Belle grips his chest, but with the combination of the wine and finally having someone to share his burden with, it is not nearly what he expected it to be.

“Belle,” he whispers, and the pain recedes slightly, as if even his own personal anguish cannot stand before the memory of his love for her. Jareth inclines his head slightly, but does not ask anything more. Rumpelstiltskin decides that is probably for the better as he cannot guarantee that he wouldn’t sob like a child if he began to talk about her.

They sit side by side in companionable silence, eyes drifting back and forth between the two images, Belle’s stationary, Sarah’s shifting every once in a while to reveal a new moment captured by the Goblin King’s crystals. Rumpelstiltskin is almost done with his fifth or sixth drink and catches himself beginning to lose himself in tracing the whirls of her dark curls with his eyes when he notices that the crystal has changed to show a much younger, round-faced version of the girl, staring out at him with wide jade green eyes. He inhales a mouthful of wine and chokes, eyes watering as he spits the glowing liquid across the floor.

“Good lord, man. She was a child!” he wheezes, smacking a hand against his chest to ease the burn of liquid sliding down the wrong way.

“That was part of the problem, yes. But not entirely. Look at her eyes. She was halfway to becoming a woman when she made that wish, and I was so eager to please that I didn’t think twice about granting it. Now I am doomed by my own folly to watch her life from a distance and never be a part of it.”

Jareth seems incredibly moved by his own dramatic speech and quickly throws back the rest of his drink, looking so melancholy that Rumpelstiltskin can’t help snorting. “Could you possibly be any more melodramatic?”

“I beg your pardon?” Jareth asks primly. Apparently he does not appreciate being called on his own drama.

“She is right there. Right where you left her and all you have to do is show up at her door with some expensive chocolates and a sincere apology and she will allow you the time to explain your stupid behavior...” His voice fades away as an idea begins to form inside his muddled brain, a plan to make everything right. Surely he could find a way to make her listen, even if he has to lock them together in a padded room and allow her to beat him to a pulp to release her frustration, even if it takes him days, months, years. Surely she will understand his… poor reaction and forgive him and then… “And then you can bring her home.”

Jareth watches the almost mad flash of energy that lights up his cousin’s face as he speaks, and realizes that the sentiment is largely not meant for his benefit. “Well, I do hope that works out for you,” he sighs and sets the glass down with a soft clink, standing on less than steady legs to move away from the table and habitually straighten his elbow length gloves.

“You are going home I hope? Not anywhere else? I don’t believe you would make much progress with your Sarah in your current condition and would in fact end up putting the poor dear into a fright.” Rumpelstiltskin lifts the mostly empty bottle and swirls the remaining liquid around, fascinated by the radiant film that coats the glass.

“I have decided to study an area that I am certain will aid my efforts in this venture.” The Goblin King stands casually on his slightly heeled boots, hip jutting to the side as he taps a finger to his lips. “I believe it is called the “romantic comedy” and I have heard that it holds a certain mysterious power over the female sex. I shall somehow harness this power and use it as a boost to my own natural charm and grace to win her heart.”

Rumpelstiltskin rolls his eyes toward the ceiling before recorking the bottle and slipping off the table to pull his cousin into a sudden hug. Jareth hesitates for a moment before returning the embrace. When they step back, Rumpelstiltskin bobs his head once in a quick nod before turning to stumble out of the room. Jareth smiles as he recognizes all the thanks he may receive from the other man for dragging him into the experience kicking and screaming. He begins to gather the necessary power to dissipate into the darkness before he remembers to replace the spinning wheel in the corner of the room. Having done that, he pauses to focus on a destination he has never travelled to before. A small, darkened living room in the apartment of a certain dark haired beauty. He grins foolishly at his perceived cleverness. He will borrow the movies from his dear Sarah and return them before she ever misses them. He decides to begin with Dirty Dancing as it sounds like a rather promising way to capture her attention, and work his way through to When Harry Met Sally. He will watch every single movie that will gain him insight into the modern, 1990’s woman and then go to work applying his newfound knowledge. What could possibly go wrong?

***************************

Rumpelstiltskin wakes the next morning with a skull splitting headache but rises and dresses as usual. The entrance hall is entirely filled with the gold thread he has spent his recent past to spinning, making it quite impossible to pass that way until he finds something useful to do with it all. Instead he snaps his fingers and appears in his spinning room. The bottle is on the table where he left it, and his favorite armchair is irrevocably soaked with particles of glitter. He waves vaguely at it and it disappears, hopefully to make an alarming appearance in the bog of eternal stench and perhaps drench some unfortunate passerby. The thought would make him smile if he didn’t think he would begin to cry immediately afterward. With a deep breath and with his eyes clenched tightly against the anticipated pain, he snaps his fingers and blinding sunlight streams through the newly replaced windows to knife at his eyes. It hurts. But squinting in the new light, he can see the motes of dust that hang thickly in the air and settle on the furniture and make the room feel musty and claustrophobic. Another snap of his fingers and the room is impeccably clean, the furniture polished and the glitter all but gone (he doesn’t imagine it will ever entirely fade. Damn eccentric Goblin King should repay him for the damages). As he stands in the morning light, a hand stretched up to partially shield his face, Rumpelstiltskin feels more awake than he has in almost exactly three months, when she—when Belle left him. His brow puckers with that thought. Belle. He wonders where she is now, and how he can find her. Because he will find her, if he has to search every inn and tavern from here to Narnia, beginning with a few probing visits to the village to figure out which direction he should strike out in to start his search for his Belle.

Perhaps tomorrow, he thinks, wincing as the rays of the sun send a shooting pain cracking through his brain. He should allow this room to air out for a few hours and remove to a less blinding room until his hangover subsides. He seems to remember a stack of books left to collect dust by a comfortable couch in the library, all of them volumes that Belle couldn’t stand to return to the shelf because of the frequency with which she reread them. One of them should entertain until he feels well enough to go out into the world and bully and coerce his way across the countryside.


End file.
